eCommerce and

Google celebrated their 10th Anniversary this week, and announced “Project 10^100”.  Ryan was actually at Google during their anniversary celebration and told us about special anniversary sprinkle cupcakes, balloons, a 10k run, and nerf gun wars!  I am sure there is more but I’ll let him tell you about it.  I think it is really cool to see the 10 ton gorilla giving back, quite the opposite of some of the other stories that I want to touch on this week.

• One of my favorite bloggers, Sarah Bird, Esq. of SEOmoz, published a blog this week and I am so glad that she did.  She brings great legal perspective to her posts that are therefore educational if nothing else, but this one really makes me want to campaign against the 10 ton gorilla.  The gorilla in this case is U-Haul.  The gist of the story is that U-Haul is suing HireAHelper.com for copyright infringement, but they are not only suing the company they are suing the founder and his wife personally.  I am sure that there is more to the lawsuit than what I am actually able to provide insight on, for multiple reasons of which I believe are too obvious to name, but I want to bring this up for revolutionary purposes.  I am sick of the Fatcats bullying the little guy.  The biggest players in Wall Street have run their companies into the toilet, and still think they deserve to walk away with millions of dollars in pension.  U-Haul has watched HireAHelper succeed, beat their website called emove (which I am referencing for purely journalistic value and refuse to provide any kind of linkjuice to the site) in organic rankings for highly targeted keywords, and then slapped him with a lawsuit.  From what Sarah knows about the suit she thinks he could win, if not for the fact that U-Haul has far more resources to come at HireAHelper with.  I think all of us self-starters, entrepreneurs, “little guys”, and forward thinkers should find a way to help Mike out, if not for principle alone, then for precedence as well.  Otherwise these suits are going to continue to happen, the industry Goliath’s are going to continue to monopolize the competition until we as consumers are left with inept products and services.  I for one am open to ideas on how the eCommerce community can contribute to Mike’s cause, and willing to help implement them, as I hope that my peers would do the same if I were in HireAHelper’s position.
• The economy isn’t all doom and gloom.  Take digg for example, they just received $28.7 million in funds, and one of the areas they plan on expanding on is employees.
• Who needs the police or a judiciary system if you are Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy?  Retailers such as the ones I have listed claim that their goods are stolen and then sold online and because of this they want to have the ability to send take-down notices without first reporting incidents to law enforcement.  They are acting like internet retailers are modern day pirates, come to think of it, I did see an Overstock employee wearing a patch and carrying a sword the last time I saw them, that must be the key to their online success.
• A child advocacy group has campaigned against Google Street View on the basis that it’s use can be exploited by child predators was called out for their exaggerations this week by Larry Magid.
• I have seen a lot of error messages in my day, but I have to agree with this blogger when they say that one of Gmail’s is the best. 
  

Recently, one of the Gordian Project properties, OutdoorPros.com, faced a frustrating and probably unnecessary conundrum with PayPal. Launched in 2008, OutdoorPros.com is a pure play online retailer offering a tremendous assortment of outdoor products. In June of 2008, after months of negotiation, OutdoorPros.com launched PayPal as a payment option. At no time during our initial exchange with PayPal did they ever mention that a portion of our offering may be in violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy.

Then, on August 6, 2008, we received an email from service@paypal.com with a subject that read “Notification of Limited Account Access”. In the body of the email:

“Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for firearms, firearm parts or accessories, ammunition, weapons or knives.”

According to the email, the rug had been pulled from our account and we were prevented from accepting PayPal as a payment option because we sell items that are in violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy. I will quote Adam Sandler, “Information that would have been helpful YESTERDAY!” The email continues:

“To appeal the limitation on your account, you will need to:

1.  Remove those items from your website that violate PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy.  For example, <All Batons, & All Training Batons> http://www.outdoorpros.com; and

2.  Submit the online Acceptable Use Policy affidavit.

This is not intended to be an all-inclusive review or list of your Internet sites in violation.  Furthermore, the violations of the Policy described above are not intended to be an all-inclusive list.  It is the responsibility of the user to ensure that all transactions comply with the Acceptable Use Policy.   

For more information about the status of your account and for instructions on how to restore full use of your account, please login to your PayPal account.  We encourage you to log in and restore full access as soon as possible. Should access to your account remain limited for an extended period of time, it may result in permanent limitation.”

We sell tens of thousands of products. Now the data team here has to filter out products that violate the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy by removing any firearms, firearm parts or accessories, ammunition, weapons or knives. Oy! We have an entire top level category dedicated to cutlery! Did we need to take down all of our knives and swords?

We emailed our PayPal rep and asked this very question. He contacted the PayPal Acceptable Use team and discovered that we needed to remove all guns, batons and butterfly knives. That’s simple. Except that we don’t sell guns or butterfly knives! We do, however sell training products  (red plastic weapons for duty training purposes) and balisong training knives (like butterfly knives, but they have blunt edges and are only used to learn to use the knife properly). So we asked PayPal again and found out that our training products did not need to be removed.

To PayPal’s credit, they did give us a much more detailed response the second time we asked. They let us know that we needed to remove all batons and automatic knives (switchblades) that do not visibly contain a ‘thumb screw’ or ‘thumb hole’ on the blade. Also, our United Cutlery UC702 Eight Piece Ninja Warrior Sword would need to be removed as it includes throwing stars in the package. They also included the following (not a fun read, but at least someone is publishing the information):

Question :
What types of weapons and knives does PayPal prohibit?
Answer :
PayPal prohibits transactions for certain hand weapons or knives that may be illegal or restricted in some jurisdictions.

"Weapons – PayPal generally prohibits transactions for these types of weapons:
•    Nunchaku
•    Brass or other metal knuckles
•    Leaded canes, staffs, crutches, or sticks
•    Zip guns, shurikens or throwing stars
•    Hand grenades or metal replica hand grenades
•    Billyclubs or batons, sandclubs, sandbags, or slungshots (also known as saps or blackjacks)
For other hand weapons, sellers must ensure the weapon is lawful in both the buyer's and seller's jurisdiction before completing the sale.

Knives – PayPal generally prohibits transactions for switchblade knives and disguised knives. A switchblade is any knife resembling a pocketknife with a blade that can be released automatically or by use of a trigger. Other names for switchblades include spring-blade knives, snap-blade knives, gravity knives, and butterfly knives.

A disguised knife is a knife designed to look like a harmless item. Examples of disguised knives include belt buckle knives, cane swords, shobi-zue, lipstick case knives, air gauge knives, and writing pen knives.

Other Related Items – PayPal prohibits transactions for destructive devices and the sale of military equipment or supplies that violate laws or regulations in the buyer's or seller's jurisdiction."

Well, that is much clearer, but would have been beneficial to know during negotiations. However, the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy is much more broad in its scope of unacceptable products, citing “…PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for firearms, firearm parts or accessories, ammunition, weapons or knives.” If we followed PayPal’s very broad policy, we would be forced to take down a large portion of our offering. If we don’t take the products down, and someone buys a violating item, our PayPal account may be permanently disabled. If we don’t follow the broad policy, but rather use discretion with regard to the items offered (based on their further recommendations) we risk listing an item that PayPal may decide violates their policy. We have taken a relatively conservative approach based mostly on the more detailed information we received via email. But we still needed to decide whether or not we should completely take down products that could be identified as violators.

To solve this dilemma, we proposed that we continue to offer the products that are in violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, but not offer PayPal as a payment option for those products. We suggested that we programmatically identify products that are flagged by PayPal as violators of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy and remove PayPal as a payment option from the payment flow entirely where those products are concerned. Surprisingly, PayPal responded with the following:

"In regards to disabling PayPal as a method of payment for the violating items, this is acceptable however; you must also remove any PayPal logos from these items and place a disclaimer stating that PayPal cannot be used for this product. Also, if a potential buyer wishes to send you a payment for any violating item via PayPal, you must ensure that this is not done as any payment received into the account for a violating item will result in further action being taken on the account."

With PayPal’s acceptance of our solution, we set out to update the website appropriately. Below are screenshots of our solution with a comparison between a Pay-Palalbe and a non-PayPal-able product:

With PayPal Logo 

Without PayPal Logo

With PayPal as a Payment Option 

Without PayPal as a Payment Option

This solution allows us to continue to sell all of the products in our offering and helps us to continue to conform to PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy. There is still some worry that new products may violate PayPal’s Policy. However, our data team has added a “PayPal Acceptable Use Filter” to our data entry process. This will mean that new products that are questionable will have to be submitted to PayPal’s Acceptable Use team for preapproval. We would have preferred that PayPal contact us proactively (before taking our account down) when an item was found to be a violation, but they advised us that they would not be able to do this, which is understandable, since they want us to be proactive in preventing the sale of disapproved items.

In the end, I was surprised that PayPal was flexible enough to allow us to build a mutually beneficial solution. Thanks PayPal.

Update 

About the time I finished writing this blog post we received an email from the Google Checkout team. Lo and behold! Google Checkout has a content policy similar to PayPal’s. The portion that we’ve focused on is:

"Weapons    Firearms, ammunition, and other items including but not limited to firearms, disguised, undetectable or switchblade knives, martial arts weapons, scopes, silencers, ammunition, ammunition magazines, BB guns, tear gas or stun guns."

Google Checkout’s terms are less ambiguous than PayPal’s and Google Checkout contact us proactively to request that we remove violating items. They didn’t yank our account and prevent customers from using Google Checkout. They let us know. They have formed a payment partnership with OutdoorPros.com and we’re, consequently, more inclined to be happy to oblige their requests (Thanks John).

So, what did we do about Google Checkout products? We have expanded our filter to include all products that should be filtered by both PayPal’s and Google Checkout’s terms of use. We have also removed Google Checkout as a payment option where violating products are concerned. It was really quite easy to piggy-back Google Checkout onto our PayPal solution.

Here's my picks for the week:

• This is a great little piece if you want a laugh.  The media can make anything seem scary, now stories like this want to convince us that online shopping can be dangerous to our pocketbooks.  I think it’s funny that they worded the story in a way that reflects online shopping to be risky because you may not remember it the next day.  Hello!  The reason why these people are waking up and realizing they spent $700 the night before and don’t remember it, isn’t because of the availability to shop for the items online, it’s the overkill of vodka-tonics and wine.  Bottom-line friends: Don’t drink and shop online.
• Looking at the competition can be crucial to the success of a business.  This week two stories came out about two direct competitors, two competitors that I have viewed as equals in their respective niche, Channel Intelligence and Channel Advisor.  Channel Intelligence announced an influx of new hires, while sadly Channel Advisor was scrutinized for layoffs.  Both companies are known for their data management technologies, but it should be interesting to see if both companies are seen as equals in the future. 
• Google News snafu leads to airline stock plunge 
• Linda Bustos gives her take on the new book Always Be Testing.   I was glad to see it as I have been anticipating the book since Shop.org! 
• Last week I debuted one of the new Microsoft commercials that feature Jerry Seinfeld.  I wanted to add that his salary for this campaign has been published, and it’s estimated at $10 million.
  Here is the newest commercial where they admit that they are disconnected from the average person.
  

Several months ago, we, the staff of Gordian Project, set out to author a blog. Not that all of us immediately found the prospect as inviting as others, but we generally engage a team spirit; thus the eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Blog.

I understood the blog’s driving purpose to be sharing our personal experiences within our given area of discipline as it relates to all things eCommerce. After several months of participation, I thought I would review our blog.

Caveat: I’d never read a blog going into this project, nor had I any desire to. The actual thought of sitting around reading peoples random thoughts makes me feel a bit voyeuristic. After reading Wikipedia’s definition of voyeuristic, it certainly isn’t that. Still, to this day, I’ve had no desire to read blogs other than for the purpose of this review.

I’m not sure it counts as “reading” but the one key area I check out on our blog each month is the Authors section of the home page. The key here is to identify how many posts I have in relation to other staff. I’m not sure what about life turns everything into a competition. This post will launch me forward to eight posts, however, I know I’ve written a couple that haven’t yet made it past the cutting room floor so this number isn’t hard and fast. But going with eight puts me in a respectable position.

Vanessa’s an over achiever at 40, but in all fairness she administrates the blog. I doubt any of her posts have hit the cutting room floor. If light reading and interesting tidbits is your thing, Vanessa’s Variety for the Week delivers. She shares what’s going on around other blog spaces, here at the office, and perhaps her life more than any other contributor.

Matt is our Development Manager. We’re among the elders of the office so I’ve truly appreciated our friendship. I don’t read his posts. I don’t understand what he does beyond the fact that I know he can fix or improve just about any internal process. Any time I walk past his desk he has a monitor filled with gibberish. I simply figure I won’t understand his posts either. Nice picture of his son in his most recent post though.

You might also notice Zach has 11 posts as of today. I’d read his if you only have a few minutes each day. Scanning through his titles, (that counts as reading I don’t care what anyone says) I find his posts most on topic: They include Website Improvements: Test Basic Usability Before Advancing, Google Sitelinks: Capturing My Proverbial Moby Dick, and Google Search Engine Results Pages Illustrated.

As a partner of Gordian Project I have to say bang up job Brian! I particularly enjoyed your Soft Economy Priorities? Time to Paint Your Parking Spaces; that’s leadership.

I’d like to thank Josh for his most recent post, The iPhone 3G Saved My Life. It truly inspired me to write this post. All this time I’d banged my head against the desk trying to come up with another post showcasing the thrilling world of Supply Chain, when all I needed was an iPhone post. Below, the desk I bang my head on as taken with my iPhone.

Over time, you’ll notice that Elizabeth stopped contributing as often. I have mixed emotions on this one. Elizabeth so desired to be a mother and now she is enjoying that gift with her daughter, Kara, as a stay at home mom. Congratulations Liz! However, Elizabeth also worked in Supply Chain and guess what that means, I’ve had to cover Supply Chain blogging without her. Thanks Liz!

I’ve actually loved reading Ellen’s posts for the first time as I prepared for this post. Ellen has taken the reins of a department that everyone loves to hate, HR. She sifts through all the big issues like food programs and political sensitivity. What a fun department to be in. Blog post ideas just shoot across Ellen’s desk, I’m sure. Ellen also manages Accounts Payable but I’ve yet to see a post with any real hard numbers.

Ryan takes his job seriously. He’s building a career, a future. He’s a smart guy who understands this isn’t just a 9 to 5 but an opportunity for him to build a foundation for his future. He’s always learning and looking for how to add value to the company. His posts are read as a “Where’s Ryan?” I just hope he’s not building his resume based on Ryan’s Randomness for the Week of June 20th, 2008.

Tim, as partner, bang up job! Please don’t break your run on providing an image in every post. No one does it better than you.

Our blog was launched just prior to Simon’s moving on to launch his own business. Nice work getting in a post you can use as a business card.

Before you jump to any conclusions about why Emily posted her first and, to this day, last post May 19th 2008, I dare you to read it (Dealing with Difficult Customers: Best Practices for Addressing Customer Complaints). She is right now over there fighting the good fight. Without her and her team keeping those customers happy there’s no need for this eCommerce and Entrepreneurship blog.

And finally I’d like to say welcome to Arianna. She brings so much to the table: customer service experience, multilingual, eye for detail and now she’s a vital part of Supply Chain. FYI Arianna…I’m going to need at least one post a month.

So those are my “collective of experiences, thoughts, processes and updates from people that are not only actively working in ecommerce but are also zealous about the industry.”

Now that the Democratic and Republican National Conventions are over I find myself more excited about this election then I have been in at least six years.  Some of the speeches and pandering to party ideals actually sparked my interest whereas I thought there was no hope a year ago.  Needless to say I think it is exciting especially when close friends and family disagree.  I know, I know, we are supposed to steer clear of religion and politics when in social gatherings, but I think I like to bring it up just to see how people respond.  

• What some are saying about Google's Chrome:
  
  • Google’s Sergey Brin Denies Chrome is OS for Web Apps
  • WebGuild gives their take on the browser.
  • Google has already updated Chrome’s terms of service.
  • Aaron Wall gives his take on how Chrome could affect SEO.
  • Google has added features to analytics to track Chrome.
• FutureNow’s Brian Eisenberg compares eye tracking studies done this year as opposed to 3 years ago and there is a huge difference in the way we view search results pages today.  In fact the study only reiterates the fact that ranking #1 in Google is what all SEO’s should be shooting for.
• Andy Beal lends his support to Twitter and the fact that many believe they were bullied by Google.  I myself loved the image they used during the update.

• Peter Shankman, self proclaimed CEO, Entrepreneur and adventurist has developed a way to become the middleman between publicists and reporters.
• Like politicians, business leaders have to portray themselves in a certain way to the public.  When they are lacking in an area they sometimes have to create publicity that contradicts what the public perceives is lacking.  It’s my opinion that the public likes the goofy laid back ways of Google, and Bill Gates in contrast is often seen as the stuffy type.  Seriously, how often is he not in "Microsoft mode"?  I think that is where the idea for this commercial came from, as he goes one on one with comedian Jerry Seinfeld:

Fish or Cut Bait?  This phrase came to mind this week as I have been putting off some new development to assess our website’s infrastructure. Lately I’d noticed more and more lag time and performance issues and wanted to take a look under the hood before it became a serious problem. Since our current systems were developed, we’ve added scores of thousands of products, orders, and customers to our databases, and experienced high site volume and traffic growth. And while things are still working pretty well, I thought it was time to address these issues.  That is before we hit that next level in daily orders, data storage, etc., and overwhelm our current systems.

Fish or Cut Bait? 

For you land-lubbers unfamiliar with the term “fish or cut bait”, this term refers to the age old fishing operational dilemma: Is my time better spent catching more fish now, or cutting bait so I can catch more fish later? If I decide to fish now, I may catch more fish, but soon I will run out of bait. Or I could cut bait right now, but that means I will not be catching fish. It is a valid question, and one that is almost as inextricable as the “Tastes Great – Less Filling” debate. 

Obviously, fishing is far more appealing. We all get excited when sales pour in, new suppliers are established, new markets are tapped, and new systems are implemented. Fishing is fun. Fishing feels good. Fishing is what makes the world go ‘round.

By contrast, cutting bait is not as exciting. Making the decision to slow growth, delay new supplier relationships, and hold back products until we stabilize shipping performance does not feel very rewarding. Putting off new development projects so that we can optimize database and site performance can feel like we are spinning our wheels and spending time and money on something that “already works”. And cutting mackerel and cod leaves your hands feeling slimy, and you smelling like, well a dead fish.

Why Not Fish and Cut Bait?

In a perfect world, we have fishermen AND bait-cutters. OK, pop quiz: raise your hand if you live and run your business in a perfect world. Unless your hand is raised (and by the way, you probably look a bit foolish to the person sitting next to you), you have to spend some time fishing and some time cutting bait just like the rest of us.

By nature, we want what’s new and exciting. We want to keep pushing ahead, keep forging new paths, and keep growing at a break neck pace. But in reality, sometimes that is the worst thing you can do. We’ve all heard stories of businesses that fail because they grew too fast. That seems paradoxical on the surface, as “growing too fast” generally means more revenue. But if you aren’t prepared to handle the rapid influx of business, you can get buried in the avalanche that you worked so hard to create.

So I encourage you to take a brief time out to sit back, evaluate your operations, and do a quick SWOT analysis before leaping into that next venture. Make sure your systems, procedures, and employees are prepared to handle the growth before you get there. Make sure your site, server, and databases can handle all the traffic you want to drive to it. Invest in the resources it takes to ensure solid operational performance for the sales you want to get. Make sure you are staffed to handle the influx of orders so you don’t overburden your employees. Then rinse and repeat as necessary.

It may not be as thrilling as landing Moby Dick, but then again that didn’t end well for Ahab.

On PlumberSurplus.com we sell an awful lot of Delta Faucets and from time to time we need to gather images or research product data to make sure that our information is correct and up to date.  This means that we occasionally have to resort to using the manufacturer's website, if one is available, and that's where this story begins.

My Database Team Leader was telling me about an issue he was having in using the Delta Faucet Company website and I offered my assistance to see if I might be able to help figure out the problem. While using their search, I ran into the same issue he did, a screen full of gibberish with no search results or useful information in sight.

Recently a fellow coworker sent me a blog about multi channel selling which was basically a "pro niche" piece.

"A highly effective strategy in ecommerce is multiple channel selling. This involves having several niche websites targeting different demographics, displaying specific product ranges. This allows you to create completely focused websites with a high sales conversion rate."

While I understand the niche v. mega site argument (and I also may have my mind set on which I like best both from a customer and retailer perspective) I thought this was an interesting article which highlighted all of the great things about niche websites and none of the bad. I know people say they are great because of the niche SEO value, the ability to really hone in on your marketing campaigns and the ability to focus on a particular product niche. And I agree, those are some great reasons to sell via niche websites. However, I see even more reasons to avoid buying or selling via a niche website. Developing niche SEO campaigns and polishing marketing strategies can be done on a large scale, in a similar fashion to that of niche retailers, by focusing on categories and product types.

I would even go so far as to say that I think that SEO, in particular, can go much further for larger sites.  I say this because a larger site can draw more links, have more authority within an industry and create a community built around an entire market instead of a niche. My next step in the conversation or thought process then usually turns to the ability to cross sell, up sell and convert repeat buyers which is much harder and far less effective on a niche website.  Think about it, how much harder would it be to convince a consumer to buy just one more barstool on a website that only sells barstools, as opposed to a website that sells outdoor furniture who can then up sell on the matching tables, chairs, accessories, and more?

The next thing that goes through my mind, or the next thing I would bring up in a conversation regarding niche v. vertical is operating costs.  Depending on the retailer's level of technological prowess, I also like to bring up the level of overhead with operating several websites v. one. Don't let me convince you, though; several retailers are moving away from niche websites. The Gap recently combined their web properties so that shoppers can simply visit the gap website and shop at all of their stores by means of one shopping cart. There are also several mega sites like, Amazon, QVC, etc. which continue to do well. So, while I lean on the anti-niche selling side of the fence, I believe it can be done in a scalable and profitable fashion. However, both as a buyer and seller, I prefer the larger non-niche sites.

This also brings up a nomenclature issue. I would consider "multi-channel selling" to be either selling through different means (i.e. as a physical store, catalog and online) or through different marketing channels such as shopping engines, marketplaces, and search engine marketing. So the verbiage of the article is also confusing in and of itself. I might consider the means through which products are listed and categorized on a site a "selling channel", but I would probably classify niche websites as a "selling strategy" based upon how the business has decided to sell online.

I thought starting a new regular post discussing what affiliate websites are doing to be profitable and effective, affiliate websites that are downright hilarious, and affiliate websites that fall in between these two ends of the spectrum would be beneficial to our readers. My goal is to point out aspects of publisher websites that are unappealing, and also support those who are doing it right. I don't want anyone to feel ripped on, but I think we can learn from the bad websites just as much as we can learn from the good. Sometimes the sites are funny, like the ones that put pictures of themselves from way back in the day all over the site.  Sometimes there is so much going on with colors, animations that are flashing and making noise, and pop-ups that I wonder if they may cause viewers to have an epileptic seizure.  Still other times I question what the webmaster is thinking, for instance I recently came across an affiliate website that used a 7 year old Drowning Pool song as background music "Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor" (shudders).  While these examples may be obvious “no no's” to those attempting to create a quality website, there are a few basic rules that I would like to point out this month that may help affiliate marketers make improvements.

Site 1: HydroponicsUSA.com - This website does not have a strong affiliation to our products, unless you really want to classify it as "Home and Garden". From what I'm aware, hydroponics are used frequently to grow illegal substances, and whether or not that is all they are used for, the correlation is strong enough to make me question the website before I even see it. Consider the affiliation between your brand and the connotation of hydroponics.  I guess it depends on who your target market is, but for me a red flag goes up. One of the first things that I notice when I look at an affiliate website is the contact information; it provides a sense of validity to the retailer and potential guests.  What I notice about this website is that there is no contact information or about us so that visitors can find out more about the website. This always makes me concerned about the legitimacy of the website.  

Site 2: BurberryCoatReview1234.blogspot.com - If your website listed in the program is a blog named BurberryCoatReview with a string of numbers, you are probably spam. I wish there was a way to block affiliates based on their URL, or words within their URL. Spammer affiliates will create hundreds of free blog websites about a particular product or brand in order to try and gain massive exposure to visitors. You'll also notice that such sites will have 1-2 posts that are likely very old. The publisher writes an article or two, then moves on to create another blog website account. If blogger affiliates are signing up for your program, verify their start date and look to see how many posts they have in their history. If there are only a few posts, most of which are older, and there is a good chance that this is the case, the publisher will not likely be a quality affiliate as most blogs fail when they are abandoned by their owner. 

Site 3: CouponCactus.com - This is an example of a wonderful effort by David Fitterman to collect and organize coupons from merchants. With a strong offering of exclusive coupons, Coupon Cactus has over 800 stores and 2,000 coupons to check out. The site provides visitors with the ability to browse by store, category, size of discount, new and expiring, as well as site favorites. Coupon Cactus incentivizes its users to sign up and register to earn cash back to their account, similar to Jellyfish cashback. While there has been much talk about coupon sites and whether or not they should be part of a merchant's affiliate program, I believe with the right approach and management a coupon affiliate site can be a positive addition in an affiliate program, and I think this is a good example of a publisher that is doing it right.

Site 4: Homeincomeportal.com/... - If your site is about how to make $$$$ from home in just minutes a day, you will get declined, at least by our affiliate management team. The quality of these sites is generally terrible, packed with false/questionable statements and gimmicky software solutions for sale, such as "traffic magnet" or "banner fiesta". This specific example has dozens of different topics including software ads, recipes, testimonials (with a picture of a man with no shirt on), and ten plus links to products called "Buy this here". The page was so long, I seriously had to scroll for quite a long time to review all the content (if you can even call it that). Such a long page is poor design and ineffective at generating conversions for your program.  This design structure and get rich quick type of marketing is not something I consider to be beneficial to the retailer, or all eCommerce for that matter.

Let's recap and look at the key takeaways for both publishers and affiliate managers this month:

1. Don't use animated gifs (especially ones of flames touting "Hot Deals!"), tiled/repeating background images, mouse cursor effects, useless sound effects and background music. 
2. Don't use free hosting site urls like tripod, geocities (yes, I still see applicants with these), etc. Spend $7 and purchase a domain, it will be worth it in the long run. 
3. Provide links for retailers to contact you for recruitment purposes or other reasons. 
4. Don't get nasty with the affiliate manager. Yes we have received, such distasteful replies to our publisher decline emails as "your loss", "it's your money (aka your company's) that you're losing" or "I don't know what your problem is". Let's act like responsible, grown up, mature professionals. We are trying to do business together to benefit both parties.  
5. Do include your affiliate ID in email communications, as it helps pull up your account instead of hunting you down by domain. 
6. Don't use free templates for affiliate sites. I usually get about a dozen applications a week that use some sort of pre-configured template. 
7. Avoid creating a page full of 468x60 banners that takes several minutes to load even on broadband. No one, I mean no one, will wait to see all the banners to load. 
8. Build a site that the merchant would be proud to link to and be associated with. 

Look for next month's edition with more reviews and tips. 

Like other online retailers, we have a presence on the Amazon Marketplace. Amazon has a great model that allows quality sellers to make their products available to millions of buyers. However, their integration model for Marketplace sellers is kind of like the Bejing Olympics; dirty and dirtier.

We began with a smaller offering of some of our most popular products, and gradually increased the offering (and sales) on Amazon. Recently we were offered the chance to become an Amazon Gold Seller, meaning among other things that we’d offer more products for sale on Amazon. More products listed on Amazon = more sales from Amazon. A good thing, to be sure; however, we were currently manually entering Amazon orders into our site, and this was about to flood our customer service department.

Never fear, IT would come to the rescue (I left the cape at home though). As we had successfully integrated with PayPal and Google Checkout over the past year, I was pretty confident that the Amazon integration would be pretty straight-forward. After all, we are talking about the world’s largest online retailer. Why, they probably had a team of monkeys on standby to help with my every need, sample code to do the work for me, and color coded, easy to follow documentation that would point me right where I needed to go. Heck, I may put this one on autopilot and go golfing with my son.

So I began this integration the same way as always – looking for documentation online. Hmmm… that’s funny, I can’t seem to find what I’m looking for. No, that’s not it. No, I don’t want Amazon Web Services.

After a couple fruitless hours of searching, I finally just emailed our Amazon representative...

Matt: “Hi, can you email me the documentation to integrate with Amazon so we can process orders programmatically” 

Amazon: “Let’s schedule a call with your technical team and we can discuss the options.  We currently don’t have a formal document that describes this process.” 

Say what?!?!? The world’s largest online retailer and Marketplace to thousands of merchants doesn’t have documentation for integrating with them? Turns out no, they don’t. 

Some key paraphrases from that call and subsequent emails:

Matt: “Can you tell me how to access our orders?”

Amazon: “In order to download your orders, you have to use this tool (AMTU) that is open source. We wrote it, but we don’t support it at all. You have to download it from somewhere else”.

Matt: “I see online that you have a sandbox for testing this integration. Can you set me up with access to that?”

Amazon: “We no longer have a test environment. You have to test it live.”

Matt: “How can I push our order ID back into Amazon’s system?”

Amazon: “That option is not supported using flat file or manual fulfillment.” (The method they recommended we use)

This story does have a mostly happy ending. In a matter of a couple of days, we were able to integrate with Amazon and import our Amazon orders into our order management solution, relieving a large burden from our awesome customer service team and freeing them up from data input to actually helping our customers.

If you are interested in more information regarding integrating with Amazon, PayPal, or Google Checkout, feel free to comment. I’m here to help!

<